How Did The Scottsboro Trials Shaped American History

America, Changed for the better

"You don't fight racism with racism, the best way to fight racism is with solidarity"(Bobby Seale). Over the years our American history has been shaped by good and bad events. Racism has been apart of us since the beginning. It has shaped our history a great deal. An important event that has shaped American history is the Scottsboro trials. The Scottsboro trials was an event where nine black boys were accused of rape by two white woman, and they went through a series of trials. The Scottsboro tragedy impacted and shaped our nation and its history being one of the earliest times whites and blacks fought together, and getting rid of how the south saw "justice", and lastly the stereotype that

Before the Scottsboro trials blacks and whites have never really agreed on anything. The Scottsboro trials were heard of by everyone and caught the eye of the communist party. The communists had hired a very good defense attorney, his name was Samuel Leibowitz. The communist party hired Leibowitz because he was famously known for winning most of his cases, and just for being a good attorney. Leibowitz didn't like losing his cases and would do the most he possibly could to win. The communists thought we would be able to help the nine Scottsboro boys win their trials. During the Scottsboro trials blacks and whites came together and marched side by side. "Black and white unite and fight" was a big slogan that was used during this. While all that was happening the communist party had also sent out the mothers of the boys to "tours" to speak. When the mothers went on these tours Ruby Bates would go along and apologize. The Scottsboro trials had shaped America's history by having blacks and whites come and fight

The Scottsboro trials was heard of everywhere. Everyone knew about it, so the people of the south couldn't do their version of justice without everyone everywhere getting extremely upset. If it had been up to just the south the nine boys would have been found guilty in the first trial and sentenced to death, but because it was so public they couldn't just sentence them to death. For example one of the trials had to be re done because the nine boys didn't have proper defense. So they brought in a guy from the north named Samuel Leibowitz. This gave the nine boys more of a chance to prove they were innocent. Another example that the south was being quite unfair is by the jury. The jury consisted of all white men. To make it more fair to the Scottsboro boys they had to let black men be in the jury. This caused their to be another trial. My last example is of the judge the Scottsboro boys had. The judge was judge Horton. Judge Horton knew the nine boys weren't guilty but was a man of the south, so he found them guilty anyway. This caused to have another trial and one with a new judge. The scottsboro boys had changed America's history by changing how the south saw